Analog SFF, March 2012 Read Online Free Page B

robot. It was hard to overestimate how helpful such smooth interface features could be. Humans have a lot of hard-wired capabilities in their brains, and it was better to take advantage of those abilities instead of trying to learn to fight them. Little tricks like this—placing the other robots in sound space—could save time and energy when you wanted to find the other robot. It was far better than having to look at a three-dimensional map, for example. We already had three-dimensional maps in our head; good software exploited those maps.
    The same was true for the bodies. They were roughly humanoid, and of human proportions. That was not because human form was optimal for a small bot, but rather because it meant that we needed negligible time to prepare to run a humanoid robot. Something with twelve arms would have required years of practice for competent control. Two legs, two arms, twin forward facing eyes, and you could run it in minutes.
    Karen's robot lurched forward. “This is weird, controlling the legs."
    "Just walk in place till you feel comfortable with the pressure sensors,” I told her. The suits allowed control of perambulation by sensing the electrical nerve impulses to muscle control, and then interpreting them as commands. At first, you had to walk to make it work, but with practice it seemed you just had to think about walking—sending minimal efferent nerve signals to your leg muscles—and the bot would walk.
    I walked my bot over and stood beside Karen's, right on the threshold of the door to the machine.
    "All right,” I said. “I go first. You all follow a step behind. We stay together until we agree as a group to part. If you see something, even if you think the rest of us must have seen it, sound out. We need to be sure we're all on the same mission while in there. And remember. I've got only four of these robots. Take it easy."
    "Yeah, yeah,” Daltry said. “Let's go.
    I took a step forward.
    And the lights came on.
    Daltry whistled. “Man, it's got power. It as old as the oceans and it's got power."
    We stood there, staring. I could hear Karen and Daltry breathing. Finally, Karen said, “It looks like a city."
    I would have said it looked like a three dimensional circuit board, but once she said it I had to agree. “It does."
    Before us a long line of lights stretched out into what, at our scale, was a distance like a city block. From this “floor” rose blocks of gold and white structures. Lines of light shot up and down their frames.
    "Wait a minute,” Daltry said. “We've got signal in the low frequency bands."
    "I thought you checked for whether this thing was transmitting radio when we set up the antenna,” I told him.
    "I did."
    "Okay,” I said. “Let's pause the mission and look at these signals."
    "No way,” Karen and Daltry said simultaneously.
    "It's not like we're going to just be able to decode them,” Daltry said. “We're here, the bots are set to walk, let's take a few steps."
    Reluctantly, I did not argue. We moved another centimeter inside.
    "You know,” Daltry said, “I've changed my mind. Karen can't be right. This thing can't be five hundred million years old. It can't be a thousand years old. Nothing, nothing could stay like this, in working shape, for that long."
    As an engineer, I was inclined to agree. We stared at the complex structures and the traveling lights. They seemed . . . new, somehow. All the angles sharp, all the lights of equal luminosity. Matter just wasn't that resilient. Entropy always won, and won quickly.
    "It's in the rock, and it's working,” Karen said.
    "That's just evidence that it got into the rock somehow,” I said. “I agree with Daltry. Nothing lasts that long and keeps structural form."
    "What if they had some kind of . . . field, or something, that reduced nuclear decay?” Daltry asked.
    "A kind of stasis field? An anti-entropy field. Wait a minute. Karen, put your robot in neutral and pull off your helmet."
    "Why?"
    I